Reports Roundup (March 29)

Reports Roundup (March 29)

Reports Roundup (March 29)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following list is a compilation of the reports, statements, and other materials featured on the Jadaliyya Reports Page this past week.]

Joint Statement: Palestinian NGOs in Israel Reject the "Sectarian Representation Law" Palestinian NGO`s in Israel speak out against splitting Arab representation on a public advisory board of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between Christians and Muslims.

Reporters Without Borders Statement on Harassment of Media in Yemen Reporters Without Borders reports on the regular acts of violence committed with impunity against journalists.

Statement: Confronting the Human Rights Crises Left in the Wake of the Iraq War Jeena Shah of the Center for Constitutional Rights outlines the continuing efforts by the Right to Heal Initiative to seek the trial of the United States for war crimes in Iraq.

Squeezing the Life out of Yarmouk: War Crimes Against Besieged Civilians Amnesty International reports on the ivarious war crimes committed against the civilians currently trapped and being starved in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp located in Damascus, Syria.

Witnessing Gezi (Video) Photojournalist Emin Ozmen`s prize-winning footage of the Taksim Gezi Park protests against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan which took place last summer.

The Next Round in Gaza The International Crisis Group reports on the high possibility of the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza shattering, ushering in another round of intense fighting that neither side wants. The ICG also suggests how this can be avoided.

The Terrorism Law in Bahrain: A Tool to Silence Dissidents The Bahrain Center for Human Rights reports on the liberal use of the vaguely defined 2006 "Protecting Society from Terrorism Acts" to persecute peaceful dissidents and activists.

Joint Statement Calling for Release of Arbitrarily Detained Journalists and Others in Syria Reporters Without Borders and sixty other NGO`s call on the Syrian government to heed the United Nations Security Council demand to release all arbitrarily detained people, in particular the human rights activists Mazen Darwish, Hani al-Zitani, and Hussein Ghareer.

Human Rights Watch Briefing on Saudi Arabia`s New "Terrorism Laws" Human Rights Watch reports on the newly created legal framework that seeks to categorize nearly all dissident expression as "terrorism". The new terrorism law and royal decrees come during a crackdown on activists and dissidents.

Announcements

Panel Event -- The Syrian Tragedy: Where From? Where to? (3 April, George Mason University)

Introducing MERIP`s Blog and Its Guest Editors

Call for Applicants: AUB Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Public Policy and International Affairs in the Arab World

Call for Papers: Understanding Israeli Practices of Forced Displacement and Settler Colonialism in the OPT (Deadline: 1 May)

Call for Participants: Proposal Writing and Research Design Seminars for Junior Scholars in Egyptian Public Universities (Deadline: 1 May)

Conference -- The Revolutionary Public Sphere: Contention, Communication, and Culture in the Arab Uprisings (10 April, University of Pennsylvania)

Conference -- The Past and the Future of the Legal Left: Celebrating Duncan Kennedy`s Scholarship (London, 22 May)

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412